2024: My Deep Gratitudes
As we enter the final hours of 2024, I've been reflecting on all it contained. In that spirit, I wanted to just share a few of the things I am grateful for from the year past as I look to the one ahead.
God's unwavering presence and love. This was a year where I have had to do a lot of heart-work (a work that is far from over.) I've been recognizing deep problems with how I feel toward and move through the world. My emotions and anxieties have often been at the fore. It has not been my most comfortable year with God. There are deep ways I struggle to trust him, and hard conversations we've had.
What I am so grateful for is recognizing that despite those struggles, He has brought me to a place where I can fall apart and wrestle with Him from within His embrace. I don't feel like I have to question his presence anymore, or keep up appearances, or pretend like everything is okay. I have been able to cry out with a groaning, wounded heart while knowing He is infinitely close to me and isn't going anywhere. And while that doesn't fix the heart issues, it gives me a security within which I can continue to heal.
The slow growth of marriage. Second marriages are strange. You go into them feeling like you should be better at it than you are. Certainly, there are transferable skills and a level of maturity you don't have when you are younger. But at the same time, learning to love a particular person is not the same thing as love in general. There are many things I continue to have to learn and unlearn, about Leah and (especially) about myself. Add to that the layers of hurt from past stories and the way my hurts in turn hurt the other person and it can often feel really hard.
I am deeply grateful, through the joys and sorrows of it, for Leah, her perseverance and patience and forgiveness, and the ways we are learning and growing together. Marriage is a space where I realize every year that my issues run deeper than I thought they did the year before. Yet the beauty of it is that marriage is also a shelter that provides space for the slow but beautiful work of growth and learning. I'm thankful I get to do it beside Leah and that she is willing to walk beside me despite my struggles and sins and belated self-discoveries.
The patient love of children. Parenting is a hard and high calling. I seek to do it well, but I am constantly reminded of how far short I fall, especially when my own emotional and relational reserves feel dry. One of the greatest concrete reminders of God's grace to me is that even when I feel like I am running on empty, my kids show profound grace and simple joy at being around me. They just want my presence, not some artifice or clever answer or ability to perform at the levels I feel I should. Several times this year I have been moved to tears by the fact that they see me as I am and still love me, simply because I'm their parent.
A church that loves well. It is a remarkable privilege that I get to serve as the pastor of a beautiful community of saints. Every church has things to work on, and every church is a fellowship of sinners who fall short of the destination they are traveling toward. Ministry certainly comes with challenges of all sorts. Yet I think we often overcomplicate things. The most essential question for any church is this: "Do they imperfectly but truly, palpably, love Jesus and each other?" Grace Central has much of this love. As a result, every cost of ministry feels worth it and I have a profound joy in knowing and caring for these people.
Another year to learn and grow. I am deeply grateful that Jesus isn't done with me yet. When I was twenty, a friend commented that he was glad we weren't expected to figure it all out at once. That the work of sanctification would take decades, and that meant we could be where we were and not have to worry about arriving, just taking the next step. I'm excited for the steps that lie ahead, for the ways I am continuing to learn and grow, and for my Savior, my wife, and dear friends who are beside me and before me all the way.